A recent report in Education Week showed that many of our young people in this country fall below proficient or advanced in the area of civics. For example, within this past year, the nation's 4th graders were scoring proficient at about 27%, while the rest of them were at a basic understanding for the subject. There were two other grades that were tested as well (8th and 12th), and these percentages were also just as not impressive. However, some good news, the article mentioned some gains within the Hispanic population of students. At all three grade levels, Hispanic students made some great leaps in the test scores in the past years and have made some steady improvement to date.
This isn't the first time that I've heard about students falling below average in this area of school subjects. I recently heard a news report of a percentage of high school seniors not able to locate certain middle eastern countries on a map, even though there is plenty of U.S. involvement in many of those countries. On one hand, this fact may be a result of ignorance, or on the other, having a lack of interest in learning about these foreign nations and their history. If one of the objectives of schooling is to help foster young minds gain a greater awareness of the things around them and an appreciation of other cultures, doesn't it make sense to have this type learning occur in our classrooms. And yes, this means to be able to locate countries on a map as well.
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